This guy reminds me of that dA opponent.
This comment thread hails from this Youtube video;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KJTJYmXQMs
PJ
anarchopac, There is a deeper logical problem with ancapism. You can't pay a 'defence agency' to protect your property unless you already have property. Therefore you already need to know who owns what. Who decides who owns what? Why property owners and their 'defence agencies' of course!
jmnoob1337
You own your body and you own the product of your labor because your body created it. There, I solved the who-owns-what problem!
PJ
so no one can own natural resources because no one created them, right?
right?
jmnoob1337
No one can own natural resources that no one has done anything with. The moment someone puts their own labor into mining it or melting it or refining it they now take ownership over it since they created something with it. Kinda like the idea of homesteading.
PJ
You are using very imprecise language.
Say for example you build a house with some wood. You did not create the wood or the land on which the house stands. As such, according to your original statement, you don't own the wood or the land, because you did not create them.
In your original statement you said: "You own your body and you own the product of your labor because your body created it." But your body did not create the wood or the land, so you don't own them. Agreed?
jmnoob1337
If something is unowned then the moment my labor changes it it is now a product of my labor so I own it. If someone else owns it I can't claim ownership, but if the land and the wood were not claimed then by putting work and time into building a house I am claiming the wood walls and roof and the land inside and underneath as my own. My body didn't create the natural resources, but I claim it by doing something with it, just as a bird creates his own nest and claims ownership over it in a tree branch. He didn't create the materials but he put his labor into gathering and shaping them into a nest on a spot that was not claimed by anyone else (at least in a while).
PJ
There's a basic logical problem with your argument.
You're saying that by performing an action on an object that is not the product of your labour, you thereby turn the object into a product of your labour. In other words, you're saying that by performing an action on something you didn't create, you thereby turn the thing you didn't create into something you did create. This is a non sequitur, a basic logical fallacy.
If you take an object which is not the product of your labour, and do something to it, that does not make the object the product of your labour. You have not produced the object, you have acted upon it. If I find a rock (which is not the product of my labour), and hit it with a pickaxe, that does not turn the rock into the product of my labour. My effort may have affected the rock in some way, but that does not mean that the rock itself is the product of my labour.
Mark Sebring
Dear ignorance,
What he is saying is that when you take a natural resource and create something from it, then what you create IS a product of your labor.
He is not talking about kicking rocks and claiming ownership of the rocks.
You are thinking way too hard about something very simple.
I cut down a tree (wood = natural resource). I make this tree into a beautiful table and two chairs.
The tree is NOT a product of my labor, but the chairs and table ARE a product of my labor.
The chairs and table are now mine.
Do you get it yet?
PJ
the problem with your argument is that the table and chairs are still composed of things that you didn't create.
Mark Sebring
Yes my poor fellow human being, they are still composed of things I did not create. Thank you for stating an obvious and irrelevant fact. The fact of the matter is the table and chairs are products, correct? I performed labor to produce said products. In basic logic and English, that makes the table and chairs products of my labor. And objects that are products of my labor are my property. I don't know anyway to spell it out more clearly.
jmnoob1337
No one ever said that you can only own things that you create. Once you add your labor to some natural material or unclaimed material or a material left behind or forgotten then you are claiming ownership over it by manipulating it to your desire, to make a table and chairs, which are now your own.
PJ
The problem is you are assuming this is a simple matter when in fact it isn't. The table and chairs are products of your labour, but at the same time the wood is not a product of your labour. So the object is actually a combination of the two. In other words, you used labour to shape an object that you didn't create. So the final product is the result of your labour on a thing that you didn't create.
JT
labor x resource = objectobject is a product of labor and resource
object is a product of resource
object is a product of labor
Labor theory is "I own the products of my labor"
I own object because object is a product of my labor
labor x resource = object = ownership Labor theory is not "I own the products of my labor and things that I own"
NOT labor x ownership = object = ownership
PJ
^ meaningless gibberish.
JT
Is there any way I can make it clearer to you so you understand?
PJ
try to write a comment containing an actual argument.
JT
I'm not trying to make an argument. I'm explaining what "I own the products of my labor" means. You seem to not understand that concept
Mark Sebring
Silly child, this is a very simple matter.
Objective: Find a means of determining ownership in a hypothetical world of defense agency. Who decides who owns what? So all objects and resources have no ownership and a system to figure this dilemna is requested.
Proposal: You own your body and you own the product of your labor because your body created it. I believe we have more than explained this systematic form of acquiring ownership of resources.
Conclusion: All of us understand that we did not create wood. But we also understand that the wood has no claims of ownership in this hypothetical universe. So basically on a "first come, first serve" basis, resources can be acquired through labor.
At this point, if you don't get it, then you won't get it. And in all likelihood, you do get it, you are just trolling.
PJ
What I get is that you are a blinkered and brainwashed ideologue who is incapable of understanding any concept that does not fit into your narrow world view. You can only understand the world in one very narrow way, everything else is incomprehensible to you. You are an idiot.
JT
What do you suggest then?
Mark Sebring
you are a fucking moron who took a hypothetical solution to a very hypothetical reality and could not comprehend a basic principle. I have as much knowledge and experience as is readily available to me. And I continue to expand that knowledge by speaking with intellectuals who have different backgrounds and experiences. Don't worry, you are counted among those intellectuals.
I apologize if you can't think hypothetically, your small brain kept getting tripped up on the resources' origin and missed the basic principles of the discussion. You can lash out at me for finally getting through your thick skull and making you feel like a fool, but that doesn't reflect upon my "ideology" in the slightest. Anything is comprehensible to me. You are just too stupid to discuss it with civility as you clearly make the first personal attack.
Hopefully these other intellectual gentlemen have more patience with your lack of intellect than I do. I will be unfollowing this thread now. Best wishes to +Jesse Thomas and +jmnoob1337
JT
Not only are you a blinkered idiot, you're also a liar and a hypocrite. I'm not surprised in the slightest.
JT
If you prove it, you don't have to say it
MJH
summed up...
Humans didn't create the universe, therefore no human may claim any property right over anything that would deny another human its use...
OK, now I really do despair...
PJ
Typical idiotic ancap comment. I didn't say that no human may claim any property right over anything that would deny another human its use. I pointed out that it is illogical to claim that something you didn't create is something you created, and to try to justify your property claim over it on that basis.
MJH
chair =/= wood
The chair is made of wood
You are made of atoms that you didn't make... you didn't make yourself either, but you are your own inescapable boss.
The logic behind the liberal position on acquisition of private property is far from nonsensical in this regard.
Why is my comment idiotic? I simply reduced the principle by which one disputes the statement 'chair =/= wood' which you did dispute with those nice people above multiple times.
PJ
"you didn't make yourself either, but you are your own inescapable boss"
So what if I am? This has nothing to do with chairs, which if you hadn't noticed are things which exist outside of me. Besides, you're not really your own 'inescapable boss'. Try controlling your bodily functions, or reprogramming your genes, or your brain, or deciding when your body stops working and you die. "the liberal position" You're not a liberal, not even a 'classical liberal'. Stop pretending. "The logic ... is far from nonsensical in this regard." You haven't made any sort of logical argument. All you've said is "I control my body [but you don't really] ... therefore I own this chair [total non sequitur]"
Bryce S.
You do control your body. Otherwise you wouldn't have typed out your previous comment. And if you didn't control what you typed, then there's no point in arguing with you, because you aren't responsible for any of your actions. Therefore, you can go rob a store or kill someone and since you didn't really have control over it, it's not your fault. The truth is you do have ownership of yourself, and you can trade things like your ideas or labor for money, which can then be further traded.
PJ
yes I can exercise control over my fingers, etc. But as I said, you are not 'your inescapable boss'. There are many ways in which you don't control your body. Furthermore this idea of a mind controlling a passive body is problematic, as the two are interdependent. Next, ownership is not actually the same thing as control. Ownership is a right, whereas control is simply an action. For example a thief can control a stolen bicycle, but this does not mean that he is the owner of the stolen bicycle. As such, you can't go from the assertion that 'you control yourself' to the conclusion that therefore 'you own yourself'. And anyway this idea that you own yourself is pretty meaningless and circular as you are yourself. Anyway, none of this has anything to do with your next point, which is that "you can trade things like your ideas or labor for money, which can then be further traded". That has nothing to do with whether you 'own yourself' or not.
Bryce S.
You have ownership of yourself in that you have say in what your body does (assuming there is a choice of action of course) before anyone else does. You can voluntary lift your hand, nobody else can lift your hand without either your consent or through force. Your body is apart of your "self", property is just an extension of your self. It is immoral to say anybody but yourself has say in what happens to your body. The same applies to your property, since your property is attained by using your labor, for example, and trading it voluntarily. But all property stems from the self. This is what I mean by self-ownership. You have exclusive say over what happens to your body, before any other person does.
PJ
You’re committing a type of is-ought fallacy. Your argument is: You can do XYZ with your body, therefore you have a moral right to do XYZ with your body. That doesn’t work as a logical argument. It is a non-sequitur, i.e. your conclusion does not logically follow from your initial statement. “Your body is apart of your "self", property is just an extension of your self” That’s another non-sequitur. You have provided no logical argument for why things which are external to your body are the same as your body. “It is immoral to say anybody but yourself has say in what happens to your body.” You don’t actually believe that, however, so you are contradicting yourself. For example, you believe that a land owner has a moral right to tell people who are on his land what they can and can’t do with their bodies, and ultimately to use force to make them comply with his commands. Yet now you are saying that it is immoral for someone to tell others what they can do with their bodies. This is an obvious, basic contradiction. “your property is attained by using your labor” What I assume you mean by this is that if you perform some labour on an object which is external to your body, you then have a moral right of control over that object which is identical to the moral right of control which you have over your body. This is another non-sequitur, as you have provided no logical argument for why something which is external to your body, which is not your body, somehow becomes identical to your body as the result of you performing labour on it. “all property stems from the self” A meaningless assertion, especially given the observations made above. “You have exclusive say over what happens to your body, before any other person does.” Except you don’t actually believe that, as I pointed out above. Basically your beliefs are riddled with unfounded assertions, non-sequiturs and internal contradictions.
Bryce S.
Since you have exclusive say over your body, you have exclusive say over your labor. Therefore, you can trade your labor for money if you so choose. It is immoral for someone to control your body without your permission because you would not prefer them to control your body. And since it is not preferable by you, it would be internally inconsistent to call it moral, and thus is rationally unethical.
PJ
"It is immoral for someone to control your body without your permission" Again you are contradicting yourself. You actually believe that it is moral, under certain circumstances, for someone to control your body without your permission. For example, as I said above, you believe that a 'land owner' has a moral right to control the bodies of other people (who happen to be on his land), without their permission, by force if necessary. Why do you claim that "it is immoral for someone to control your body without your permission", when this is clearly not what you actually believe?
Bryce S.
I don't "believe" it is immoral. It is rationally unethical. A land owner clearly owned land as property. Therefore him removing someone from his property by force is not different than removing someone's hand off of you that you don't want to be there.
Self ownership is simply the exclusive control and preference over your own body, labor, ideas, etc. And so if you trade your labor for something else, you have traded that which is your voluntarily for that which is someone else's. The principle of property remains universal, regardless of if is your body, or external.
PJ
"A land owner clearly owned land as property. Therefore him removing someone from his property by force is not different than removing someone's hand off of you that you don't want to be there." So you are saying that there is literally no difference between land owned by a landlord, and the landlord's body. According to you these two things are identical: they are the same thing. A patch of earth on an landlord's estate is literally identical to a patch of skin on the landlord's body. There is no difference between them. This is what you seem to be claiming. Can you clarify whether this is what you actually believe?
Bryce S.
No they are not identical, and I never said that. I said the principle of property remains the same and consistent, as any principle should.
PJ
You said: "removing someone from his property by force is not different than removing someone's hand off of you that you don't want to be there." So, you were saying that there is no difference between a piece of land and a part of someone's body. Now you are contradicting yourself, yet again, by saying that they are not the same. As you said: "No they are not identical, and I never said that". So, is a piece of land the same thing as a part of someone's body, or not? Is removing someone from a piece of land the same thing as removing their hand from your body, or not? So far you have presented two completely contradictory arguments: On the one hand, you claim that there is no difference between forcefully evicting someone from a piece of land (that you claim to own), and removing someone's hand from your body. So you are quite clearly saying that there is no difference between your body and a piece of land. Yet on the other hand, you are now claiming that these two things are not the same. So you are clearly contradicting yourself.
Unfortunately, I suspect that you may not be capable of understanding that your expressed opinions are contradictory.
**comment edited for clarity.
Bryce S.
They are not the same thing obviously. But the principle of property is the same, which is what I was referring to when I said it's not different. And arm and land are two different things. But trespassing upon either without consent give the owner the ability to use force if necessary. Of course, most people would ask the person to leave, or to remove their hand, but the consent is still a legitimate moral requirement.
Philippe James
"They are not the same thing obviously." Ok, so you acknowledge that the land is not the same thing as your body. Yet you claim that you are morally entitled to claim the same rights over the land as you claim over your own body. Why?
Bryce S.
I do acknowledge that land is different than a body. The reason that you can use force to remove someone from land that you own, just as you can to remove someone from your body... Is because the land they own is the result of him or her trading his or her labor, or creating something with his or her labor. Self-ownership (exclusive control and preference over your body before anyone else) = owning your labor = being able to trade labor for say money = being able to trade money for land. Thus the property you own stems from self ownership. So if you say it's okay for someone to steal or use someone's property by force, you are saying it's okay to use force on somebody, because their property wouldn't have been attained without them trading themself (their time and labor). If you steal a persons property, they have lost a bit of themself, since they gave up their labor for that property, and it is now gone in value.
PJ
"the land they own is the result of him or her trading his or her labor, or creating something with his or her labor" Did they create the land?
Bryce S.
No, when you trade you don't need to create it. What I mean by trade is homesteading (which was common law outside the state). Homesteading says that you must create and maintain something for it to become property. So I can't go into a forest and claim it. I can go into a forest and cut down trees and build a house, a a fence, plant grass, etc etc and this is homesteading. You didn't create the land, you created the home.
Sorry I meant to say "what I mean by create* is homesteading"
PJ
what do you mean by 'homesteading'?
"I can't go into a forest and claim it. I can go into a forest and cut down trees and build a house, a a fence, plant grass, etc etc and this is homesteading."
Who makes these rules?
Bryce S.
I explained in the previous comment. Homesteading originated as common law outside of the state. If you manipulate land, say a part of a forest into a home, or land into a farm, you have created something in a form which wasn't previously there. In essence you have created value which wasn't previously there by manipulating land, and creating something from it, as well as tend it.
Nobody makes the rules. The rules were common law. There were no authorities that made the rules, it was agreed upon by communal or societal rule. If you come up with a story and write a book, you've created value using your ideas, and it is accepted as your book. The same applied to homesteading.
PJ
"which was common law outside the state" "The term "common law" originally derives from the 1150s and 1160s, when Henry II of England established the secular English tribunals. The "common law" was the law that emerged as "common" throughout the realm (as distinct from the various legal codes that preceded it, such as Mercian law, the Danelaw and the law of Wessex)[47] as the king's judges followed each other's decisions to create a unified common law throughout England. The doctrine of precedent developed during the 12th and 13th centuries,[48] as the collective judicial decisions that were based in tradition, custom and precedent.[49]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#History Common law is statist.
Bryce S.
Common law came about through customs, rather than legislation. For example, marriage by common law was determined by agreement of Union as well as public behavior. In common law, the law follows the societal or communal customs, rather than legislation which is a forced doctrine regardless of communal wishes or customs. The state was used, but not necessary as it was already customary.
Statute and Common law are very different. Common law deals more with disputes, where statutes are created by a parliament or government body.
[think he means to say 'customary' not 'common' here]
PJ
"If you manipulate land, say a part of a forest into a home, or land into a farm, you have created something in a form which wasn't previously there." What you're actually saying is that: 'if you perform a particular type of labour on a defined piece of land, which has not had that type of labour performed on it by another human being within a defined timeframe', this bestows upon you a moral right to exercise a particular form of authority over that piece of land, and by extension, over any other humans who might go on to that piece of land for whatever reason.
"Common law came about through customs, rather than legislation" Common law was a statist creation. Read some history. It might have reflected existing 'customs', but those 'customs' were statist and hierachical. It was the feudal period, for fuck's sake. The 'custom' at that time was that the lords and other wealthy people lived in the castles and big houses, and the workers did what they were told. This whole social structure was, of course, ultimately based on force.
Bryce S.
If you create value which wasn't there before by manipulating land, through homesteading you've obtained property. So yes, you can defend your property, and use force to remove someone from your property. It's no different than if you write a book or an essay, it is considered your work.
Local customary law that became common law is irrelevant to the feudalism present during that time. Feudalism isn't a custom. Private courts, or dispute resolution organizations agreed upon by both sprites involved, would settle these sorts of issues of property in an anarcho-capitalist model. (At least as one possibility)
Both parties involved*
PJ
"If you create value which wasn't there before by manipulating land, through homesteading you've obtained property" Ok, but you didn't create the land itself, so you can't claim ownership rights over it, according to you.
Bryce S.
Land already exists, but you can create something of value out of it. An artist doesn't create the paper or paint, they create a picture using it. Their artwork is their own, just as someone who builds a house or farm or what have you makes it their own.
PJ
The problem is that you have provided no logical reason to justify claiming the sort of absolute rights over land which you advocate. At best, your arguments can only serve to justify limited, contingent rights. Furthermore, you seem to believe that you are advocating individual rights and freedom. But you're actually advocating the exact opposite. The world you are advocating is one in which those who do not own land have absolutely no rights or freedom at all.
"Local customary law that became common law is irrelevant to the feudalism present during that time." That's ridiculous. Common law judges were appointed by and employed by the King, they came from the upper classes, and their judgements necessarily accepted and defended the existing hierarchical statist social structure and state law.
MJH
So the back and forth from before and during my involvement in this comment thread has continued unabated because +Philippe James is only responding to parts of the arguments the other commenters are making... Oh boy oh boy oh boy... If I put together some calculus expression to describe my arguments, then his responses, will it turn out that he is refuting my points or will it turn out that he is attacking only keywords and phrases? I wonder... I'm almost tempted to put the time and effort into bothering to do such a thing...
PJ
what main points did you want me to respond to. When someone throws a gish-gallop of nonsense at me I don't always reply to everything, understandably.
Bryce kept on repeating that if you create something it's 'yours'. And I pointed out that he didn't create the land so his argument doesn't work. To which he then responded that if you create something it's 'yours'. How often does this cycle have to go round before the ancap's brain actually starts to function?
let me summarise the ancap argument:
1) you can control your body, therefore you have the moral right to do what you want with your body and no one can tell you what to do with it.
• that is a complete non-sequitur (basic logical fallacy) so not a good start.
2) if you perform some labour on something you didn't create, it becomes something you did create.
• another complete non-sequitur.
3) therefore if you perform some labour on something it becomes equivalent to your body.
• two non-sequiturs here.
4) therefore if you perform some labour on a piece of land, you then have the same moral right of control over that land as you have over your body.
• another non-sequitur, based on the initial non-sequitur.
Quite an achievement. An argument which commits basic logical fallacies at every step, which fails completely as a logical argument in every way.
Well done, ancaps.
[note: (1) is a false claim made by ancaps - i.e. a lie - as ancaps actually believe that they are entitled to use force to control other people's bodies, due to their property claims over external things]
MJH
You're a very special snowflake, I'll give you that. You can go on the same mental shelf in my affections as Ryan Acumen and that guy with the Mario avatar who went on and on at me about the NAA/NAP needing to be ditched in favour of a positive obligation to materially help others.
That fact is what immediately makes socialists at once hilarious and terrifying to liberals; you'd ban or mandate literally everything and leave nothing to choice, and then have the temerity to claim you've improved everybody. Hardly anarchic. For why see 'YOU DIDN'T BUILD THAT' below*.
Are you a user on dA by any chance, and would you go by the username Valendale? Something in the hysterical, accusatory and anti-intellectual tone of your messages is uncannily familiar. He accused me of typed Gish gallops as well, which is an example of an accusative non sequitur because your accusation does not follow considering what a Gish gallop actually is.
I am type on your screen. You are type on my screen. We have all the time in the world to respond to each other's points. Therefore it is physically impossible for me to bombard you with a litany of tiny arguments you have no time to respond to. So grow up.
I'm sticking with my theory that you're a kid, possibly in a UK sixth-form college and with little experience of life outside the home. It would explain the very haphazard application of argumentation you've exhibited so far.
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NON-SEQUITURS
I will put an example non-sequitur here; "I feel cold so I'll take off my jacket." You just compared the basis of liberalism to the sentence in quotes just above. And you didn't bother to say why... which hurts, bucko.
You've basically declared that attempting to be rational is a non sequitur. Calling something a non-sequitur without pointing out how is a little silly since by your use of the term the morality of quotas which socialism is based on is equally impossible, as is all ethics and indeed rational philosophy, since engaging in epistemology, ethics and economics necessitate the use of rational thought to begin to make claims, first positive ones and then normative ones. This is because to make any normative statement you are at some point going to have to start on Terra Firma by talking about positive data.
Morality may in its first instance be a personal and subjective phenom inside the mind, but thereafter, when you engage in ethics, you are conducting the philosophy of morality, to arrive at a logically concsistent description of good versus bad moral conduct that actual laws can be based on.
The reason other people are giving up talking to you is not because you're the most brilliant debater to ever live - you wouldn't be wasting your time talking to tosspots like me if that were the case - but rather because you have some emotive bee in your bonnet and won't let it rest.
So human volition and free will, which exist as per available human experience, and the existence of our individual frames of reference, and the fact that each human is the sole comptroller at the helm of their body's interaction with the external world does not equal autonomy / self-control / responsibility / ownership over their actions?
If your answer is no you'd better give a whole lotta empirical evidence for why rational thought is useless, not to mention recant all the semi-rational thought that went into all your comments above.
"1) you can control your body, therefore you have the moral right to do what you want with your body and no one can tell you what to do with it."
Saying a positive thing and then a normative thing arising from the positive thing is not a non-sequitur. Since rights are entitlements from others they are simply other people acknowledging your own nature as a self-controlling being and not interfering in that self-control/responsibility/autonomy/ownership.
Remember that words like autonomy, responsibility and ownership often overlap in spoken language precisely because they're so intimately tied up in each other.
"2) if you perform some labour on something you didn't create, it becomes something you did create."
Deliberately misleading word-use to avoid the basic fact that the useful thing that results from the input of time and effort (labour / homesteading) is not the same as what was there before the effort was applied, making the criticism of homesteading here disingenuous or ill-informed.
"3) therefore if you perform some labour on something it becomes equivalent to your body."
Property in stuff can be surrendered through gift or trade, property in the self cannot. Thus there is no claim to equivalence, only that effort exacted upon unowned resources entitles a moral agent to claim those resources as theirs.
Since your precious AnCom communes are each going to privately own all the land within their boundaries and presume to tell people from other communes to stay away (the only alternative is one global free-for-all in property rights which would have to be globally policed, necessitating the continuation of the state) what's so bad about private property?
"4) therefore if you perform some labour on a piece of land, you then have the same moral right of control over that land as you have over your body. "
At least this sentence fairly represents what it's protesting. You have the right to self-determination, yes. Since the entire present-day production structure/division of labour is predicated on exchange in title to private property, and since that division of labour is the reason that goods and services offering us survival, security, comfort and leisure have only become more available with every passing decade from 1800 to now, I'm at a loss as to what the Hell you're even complaining about.
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RIGHTS
Rights is a synonym for entitlements and they come from all the other moral agents you interact with who do not impose on you. Your right to self ownership arises when others do not impede your de facto self-control. This stuff is pretty elementary but important. For all that you seem to have heard ancap talking points, you give the impression of someone who has no idea what self-ownership is actually supposed to mean, or how John Locke justified it in his two Treatises on Government.
Which is fine.
Until three years ago neither did I, and I'm 30 now. Economics and history are my foremost interests; been studying econ for 8 years, history for 16, but ethics only for 3. But don't be surprised that people like me find your comments to be messy and unedifying.
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MORAL AGENTS
Homo agens (us) is a species of moral agents. This is because humans can distinguish between morality and immorality; my 2-year-old nieces certainly can, anyway. Obviously they do not consistently act morally since they're so young, but each can identify when she has aggressed versus when she has not.
This ain't rocket science, bro. It's UK college level philosophy.
The distinction between morality and immorality is always that most simple and obvious tenet; don't attack others.
Since humans can identify morality we are moral agents and subject to moral judgement by each other for our conduct.
This is not the case for any other species because they cannot identify morality, meaning no other species is a moral agent.
You exercise ownership over your decisions because you are aware of the moral consequences of your actions, that is the capacity of your actions to respect (or not to respect) the autonomy of others.
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"YOU DIDN'T BUILD THAT"
You. Built. The. Farm.
Or whatever you did with/to the land. The fact that you are wilfully denying the blindingly obvious difference between unused natural resources and transformed resources in use by humans tells me you're completely uninterested in an honest discussion.
I mean, are you going to tell me now that the laptop I'm typing this comment on is nothing but unowned hydrocarbons, rare earths and a dash of aluminium? If you do you will effectively be declaring yourself a solipsist because you'll be denying the significance of all the human input that was mixed with those resources before they got to me in laptop form.
Not to mention I handed over £650 for it, roughly equivalent to 81.25 hours' work at the job I was working at the time. * Also, while we're on the subject of private property... see those hours I gave up for the computer made of scarce materials? That's my just claim to private property rights over this laptop.
Computers are of course means of production so presumably private ownership of them by individuals will be outlawed or at least the use of them as means of production by their private owners will be outlawed. Who will enforce that ban I wonder? You've been running your mouth about AnCaps don't get this and AnCap is an oxymoron that, why not riddle me an answer to the question above from your extensive experience of the real world and the scarcity, production structure, and division of labour that inform your everyday life today.
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A GOING OVER
You won't enjoy this. You could work for Putin, y'know. He loves people to rant away as you have done several times in this thread to scatter debate and confuse people. Well, it ain't working, chum. I see your methods and now I'm going to describe them in detail for everyone else to see
~~~
Mark refers to chair, not wood. The aspect of philosophy which includes dealing with our conceptualisation of forms and things as separate from their basic material composition is called epistemology (theory of knowledge) and goes back at least to Plato's cave, presumably earlier.
The wood/chair distinction was actually one of the first examples used in philosophy class back in college. Chair is a form imposed by the human mind, but also, in a practical sense, is made by application of time and effort.
~~~
Trees are not moral agents. Humans are. As per the rights/entitlements explanation above it is necessary for subsequently arriving humans to respect the peaceful property claims of the person or people who got there first since those first people put the work in, and the later arrivals didn't.
~~~
Matt states the obvious about free-will over voluntary nervous system and so external actions affecting external world. Philippe dodges by talking about chairs + snide remarks, thus . Philippe tries to deny Matt's obvious statement using other functions, thus strawman. Philippe also confirms Matt's "inescapable" point by saying "Try controlling... when your body stops working and you die."
~~~
"The limit of each moral agent's freedom shall be respect for the equal freedom of others."
Liberalism in a sentence.
The non-agression principle/axiom is simply that sentiment taken to its logical conclusion, that ALL action by one moral agent that impedes other moral agents' autonomy without their consent is wrong. In other words consent is the yardstick of anlib/ancap ethics, the difference between...
Euthanasia & murder
Intimacy & molestation
Lovemaking & rape
Sparring & assault
Care & kidnapping
Sharing & theft
Trade & fraud
Riddle me the illiberalism here, Clean One...
~~~
Well now I have, and it's just above. If I make, buy or receive in gift a chair I own it and you don't. This is not hard to understand which means you've been disingenuous this whole time.
---------------------------
PEACE
This was a very long comment, and you can accuse me of a gish gallop if you wish. However, in te same breath you might as well accuse me of being a meringue for all the authority such a claim can enjoy in a typed medium.
If this comment seems unfair in its length then be methodical - copy-paste it into a notepad and break it down slowly into its logical components, then when you respond attack the components with some thought for what meanings I am actually conveying rather than the mental aerobics above.
Saying things like "if you perform some labour on something you didn't create, it becomes something you did..." is disingenuous and unfair. I know exactly what you're thinking after reading that.
But Matt said, "Humans didn't create the universe, therefore no human may claim any property right over anything that would deny another human its use..."
Yes I did, because your statements to Mark Sebring and the others were to the effect that;
• Humans don't create original natural resources
• Therefore can't use homesteading through mixing labour to justify advent of property rights in stuff
Eg1;
All this was actually pretty passable, but you ruined it when you said;
This meant you were actually declaring the chair to be nothing more than wood. That right there was a non sequitur because the second position does not logically follow from the first. Also, in economics the term production refers to transformation through mixing of labour (and usually capital) with a substance or an object to create something with a use different from its previous one. You are not really going to argue that a tree and a chair are the same, non?
We do create things for which we have uses through mixing our labour with natural resources, where the resources themselves could not have been thusly used, and you denied this very simple point, presumably either because you have a very blinkered opinion of private property or because you're young and still figuring out how to think and debate.
PJ
No, it's not about that.
That is an amazingly dumb thing to say. Your argument is that taking over and controlling things by force is economically unsustainable.
See: the entirety of human history to understand why you are wrong.
What I meant by my note was that ancaps believe they are entitled to use force against other people's bodies in order to enforce their property claims and rules. This flatly contradicts the false claim often repeated by ancaps, i.e. that they believe it is wrong for people to use force against others, or that people are entitled to do what they want with their bodies without interference from others.
No ancap actually believes this, so it is strange that they feel the need to keep repeating this lie. "fair use rights which can easily be agreed when property titles are exchanged" In order to have an exchange of property titles, the property title must have originated from somewhere. Ancap arguments regarding the origins of and justifications for existing property titles are both historically false and illogical.
MJH
In 2015 try to start your own world-domineering fief and turn humanity into your serfs. Go on. The fact that my statement was about any potential attempt to work from the resources available to any given individual or group now was vital to understanding the argument.
Maybe I should be sorry I didn't specifically say that. Yet again you skirted the entire point because you have no argument. Give up.
INITIATE force against others. Your inability to identify cause and effect is your cross to bear, not mine.
I'm not bothering to respond to anything else you've said because, as always, you're ignoring what I'm saying to score points, rather than actually engaging with the ideas.
Now I actually miss FinnishAnarchist - at least (s)he cared what her/his opponents were trying to say. You're either a solipsist or a sophist or both, and nobody is impressed by you, including the other AnComs here, which is why they're not backing you up.
PJ
Typical deceitful ancap garbage. What you actually believe is that you are entitled to initiate force against the bodies of others - against peaceful people who have not previously used force against you - in order to enforce your property claims over external objects.
[defense of property is justified on consequential grounds cos I need it to live at anything above a bare subsistence level.]
Bryce S.
You do not initiate force to enforce property claims. Using force to claim property is not viewed as the legitimate obtaining of ownership. Homesteading and trade, in contrast are and have been in history viewed as legitimate property ownership between ordinary people, such as farmers. And neither homesteading nor trading involve initiating force. REACTION to force is different. Self-defense and defense of one's own property (which are really two sides of the same coin) are not the INITIATION of force.
MJH
If I enter your house and sit down and watch your TV and eat your food and you tell me to get out I'll remind you that you said that.
Maybe at this point it will occur to you how Orwellian your endless dissembling in this discussion has been. Until such a time, it's been nice but you really have nothing to say.
Do you mean defence as in a security company, not an arbitration agency?
If so, then you're almost certainly correct. They very likely would mainly hire out their services to neighbourhood/road/park/farm owners, arbitration agencies and each other as these would be more dependable long-term customer bases. Roads don't disappear very quickly.
If you did mean arbiters, however;
Dude, just subscribe like Netflix or Apple Music. Private arbitration agencies will all basically be insurance companies anyway, charging a monthly or quarterly premium based on their assessment of the risk you pose.
This comment thread hails from this Youtube video;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KJTJYmXQMs
PJ
anarchopac, There is a deeper logical problem with ancapism. You can't pay a 'defence agency' to protect your property unless you already have property. Therefore you already need to know who owns what. Who decides who owns what? Why property owners and their 'defence agencies' of course!
jmnoob1337
You own your body and you own the product of your labor because your body created it. There, I solved the who-owns-what problem!
PJ
so no one can own natural resources because no one created them, right?
right?
jmnoob1337
No one can own natural resources that no one has done anything with. The moment someone puts their own labor into mining it or melting it or refining it they now take ownership over it since they created something with it. Kinda like the idea of homesteading.
PJ
You are using very imprecise language.
Say for example you build a house with some wood. You did not create the wood or the land on which the house stands. As such, according to your original statement, you don't own the wood or the land, because you did not create them.
In your original statement you said: "You own your body and you own the product of your labor because your body created it." But your body did not create the wood or the land, so you don't own them. Agreed?
jmnoob1337
If something is unowned then the moment my labor changes it it is now a product of my labor so I own it. If someone else owns it I can't claim ownership, but if the land and the wood were not claimed then by putting work and time into building a house I am claiming the wood walls and roof and the land inside and underneath as my own. My body didn't create the natural resources, but I claim it by doing something with it, just as a bird creates his own nest and claims ownership over it in a tree branch. He didn't create the materials but he put his labor into gathering and shaping them into a nest on a spot that was not claimed by anyone else (at least in a while).
PJ
There's a basic logical problem with your argument.
You're saying that by performing an action on an object that is not the product of your labour, you thereby turn the object into a product of your labour. In other words, you're saying that by performing an action on something you didn't create, you thereby turn the thing you didn't create into something you did create. This is a non sequitur, a basic logical fallacy.
If you take an object which is not the product of your labour, and do something to it, that does not make the object the product of your labour. You have not produced the object, you have acted upon it. If I find a rock (which is not the product of my labour), and hit it with a pickaxe, that does not turn the rock into the product of my labour. My effort may have affected the rock in some way, but that does not mean that the rock itself is the product of my labour.
Mark Sebring
Dear ignorance,
What he is saying is that when you take a natural resource and create something from it, then what you create IS a product of your labor.
He is not talking about kicking rocks and claiming ownership of the rocks.
You are thinking way too hard about something very simple.
I cut down a tree (wood = natural resource). I make this tree into a beautiful table and two chairs.
The tree is NOT a product of my labor, but the chairs and table ARE a product of my labor.
The chairs and table are now mine.
Do you get it yet?
PJ
the problem with your argument is that the table and chairs are still composed of things that you didn't create.
Mark Sebring
Yes my poor fellow human being, they are still composed of things I did not create. Thank you for stating an obvious and irrelevant fact. The fact of the matter is the table and chairs are products, correct? I performed labor to produce said products. In basic logic and English, that makes the table and chairs products of my labor. And objects that are products of my labor are my property. I don't know anyway to spell it out more clearly.
jmnoob1337
No one ever said that you can only own things that you create. Once you add your labor to some natural material or unclaimed material or a material left behind or forgotten then you are claiming ownership over it by manipulating it to your desire, to make a table and chairs, which are now your own.
PJ
The problem is you are assuming this is a simple matter when in fact it isn't. The table and chairs are products of your labour, but at the same time the wood is not a product of your labour. So the object is actually a combination of the two. In other words, you used labour to shape an object that you didn't create. So the final product is the result of your labour on a thing that you didn't create.
JT
labor x resource = objectobject is a product of labor and resource
object is a product of resource
object is a product of labor
Labor theory is "I own the products of my labor"
I own object because object is a product of my labor
labor x resource = object = ownership Labor theory is not "I own the products of my labor and things that I own"
NOT labor x ownership = object = ownership
PJ
^ meaningless gibberish.
JT
Is there any way I can make it clearer to you so you understand?
PJ
try to write a comment containing an actual argument.
JT
I'm not trying to make an argument. I'm explaining what "I own the products of my labor" means. You seem to not understand that concept
Mark Sebring
Silly child, this is a very simple matter.
Objective: Find a means of determining ownership in a hypothetical world of defense agency. Who decides who owns what? So all objects and resources have no ownership and a system to figure this dilemna is requested.
Proposal: You own your body and you own the product of your labor because your body created it. I believe we have more than explained this systematic form of acquiring ownership of resources.
Conclusion: All of us understand that we did not create wood. But we also understand that the wood has no claims of ownership in this hypothetical universe. So basically on a "first come, first serve" basis, resources can be acquired through labor.
At this point, if you don't get it, then you won't get it. And in all likelihood, you do get it, you are just trolling.
PJ
What I get is that you are a blinkered and brainwashed ideologue who is incapable of understanding any concept that does not fit into your narrow world view. You can only understand the world in one very narrow way, everything else is incomprehensible to you. You are an idiot.
JT
What do you suggest then?
Mark Sebring
you are a fucking moron who took a hypothetical solution to a very hypothetical reality and could not comprehend a basic principle. I have as much knowledge and experience as is readily available to me. And I continue to expand that knowledge by speaking with intellectuals who have different backgrounds and experiences. Don't worry, you are counted among those intellectuals.
I apologize if you can't think hypothetically, your small brain kept getting tripped up on the resources' origin and missed the basic principles of the discussion. You can lash out at me for finally getting through your thick skull and making you feel like a fool, but that doesn't reflect upon my "ideology" in the slightest. Anything is comprehensible to me. You are just too stupid to discuss it with civility as you clearly make the first personal attack.
Hopefully these other intellectual gentlemen have more patience with your lack of intellect than I do. I will be unfollowing this thread now. Best wishes to +Jesse Thomas and +jmnoob1337
JT
Not only are you a blinkered idiot, you're also a liar and a hypocrite. I'm not surprised in the slightest.
JT
If you prove it, you don't have to say it
MJH
summed up...
Humans didn't create the universe, therefore no human may claim any property right over anything that would deny another human its use...
OK, now I really do despair...
PJ
Typical idiotic ancap comment. I didn't say that no human may claim any property right over anything that would deny another human its use. I pointed out that it is illogical to claim that something you didn't create is something you created, and to try to justify your property claim over it on that basis.
MJH
chair =/= wood
The chair is made of wood
You are made of atoms that you didn't make... you didn't make yourself either, but you are your own inescapable boss.
The logic behind the liberal position on acquisition of private property is far from nonsensical in this regard.
Why is my comment idiotic? I simply reduced the principle by which one disputes the statement 'chair =/= wood' which you did dispute with those nice people above multiple times.
PJ
"you didn't make yourself either, but you are your own inescapable boss"
So what if I am? This has nothing to do with chairs, which if you hadn't noticed are things which exist outside of me. Besides, you're not really your own 'inescapable boss'. Try controlling your bodily functions, or reprogramming your genes, or your brain, or deciding when your body stops working and you die. "the liberal position" You're not a liberal, not even a 'classical liberal'. Stop pretending. "The logic ... is far from nonsensical in this regard." You haven't made any sort of logical argument. All you've said is "I control my body [but you don't really] ... therefore I own this chair [total non sequitur]"
Bryce S.
You do control your body. Otherwise you wouldn't have typed out your previous comment. And if you didn't control what you typed, then there's no point in arguing with you, because you aren't responsible for any of your actions. Therefore, you can go rob a store or kill someone and since you didn't really have control over it, it's not your fault. The truth is you do have ownership of yourself, and you can trade things like your ideas or labor for money, which can then be further traded.
PJ
yes I can exercise control over my fingers, etc. But as I said, you are not 'your inescapable boss'. There are many ways in which you don't control your body. Furthermore this idea of a mind controlling a passive body is problematic, as the two are interdependent. Next, ownership is not actually the same thing as control. Ownership is a right, whereas control is simply an action. For example a thief can control a stolen bicycle, but this does not mean that he is the owner of the stolen bicycle. As such, you can't go from the assertion that 'you control yourself' to the conclusion that therefore 'you own yourself'. And anyway this idea that you own yourself is pretty meaningless and circular as you are yourself. Anyway, none of this has anything to do with your next point, which is that "you can trade things like your ideas or labor for money, which can then be further traded". That has nothing to do with whether you 'own yourself' or not.
Bryce S.
You have ownership of yourself in that you have say in what your body does (assuming there is a choice of action of course) before anyone else does. You can voluntary lift your hand, nobody else can lift your hand without either your consent or through force. Your body is apart of your "self", property is just an extension of your self. It is immoral to say anybody but yourself has say in what happens to your body. The same applies to your property, since your property is attained by using your labor, for example, and trading it voluntarily. But all property stems from the self. This is what I mean by self-ownership. You have exclusive say over what happens to your body, before any other person does.
PJ
You’re committing a type of is-ought fallacy. Your argument is: You can do XYZ with your body, therefore you have a moral right to do XYZ with your body. That doesn’t work as a logical argument. It is a non-sequitur, i.e. your conclusion does not logically follow from your initial statement. “Your body is apart of your "self", property is just an extension of your self” That’s another non-sequitur. You have provided no logical argument for why things which are external to your body are the same as your body. “It is immoral to say anybody but yourself has say in what happens to your body.” You don’t actually believe that, however, so you are contradicting yourself. For example, you believe that a land owner has a moral right to tell people who are on his land what they can and can’t do with their bodies, and ultimately to use force to make them comply with his commands. Yet now you are saying that it is immoral for someone to tell others what they can do with their bodies. This is an obvious, basic contradiction. “your property is attained by using your labor” What I assume you mean by this is that if you perform some labour on an object which is external to your body, you then have a moral right of control over that object which is identical to the moral right of control which you have over your body. This is another non-sequitur, as you have provided no logical argument for why something which is external to your body, which is not your body, somehow becomes identical to your body as the result of you performing labour on it. “all property stems from the self” A meaningless assertion, especially given the observations made above. “You have exclusive say over what happens to your body, before any other person does.” Except you don’t actually believe that, as I pointed out above. Basically your beliefs are riddled with unfounded assertions, non-sequiturs and internal contradictions.
Bryce S.
Since you have exclusive say over your body, you have exclusive say over your labor. Therefore, you can trade your labor for money if you so choose. It is immoral for someone to control your body without your permission because you would not prefer them to control your body. And since it is not preferable by you, it would be internally inconsistent to call it moral, and thus is rationally unethical.
PJ
"It is immoral for someone to control your body without your permission" Again you are contradicting yourself. You actually believe that it is moral, under certain circumstances, for someone to control your body without your permission. For example, as I said above, you believe that a 'land owner' has a moral right to control the bodies of other people (who happen to be on his land), without their permission, by force if necessary. Why do you claim that "it is immoral for someone to control your body without your permission", when this is clearly not what you actually believe?
Bryce S.
I don't "believe" it is immoral. It is rationally unethical. A land owner clearly owned land as property. Therefore him removing someone from his property by force is not different than removing someone's hand off of you that you don't want to be there.
Self ownership is simply the exclusive control and preference over your own body, labor, ideas, etc. And so if you trade your labor for something else, you have traded that which is your voluntarily for that which is someone else's. The principle of property remains universal, regardless of if is your body, or external.
PJ
"A land owner clearly owned land as property. Therefore him removing someone from his property by force is not different than removing someone's hand off of you that you don't want to be there." So you are saying that there is literally no difference between land owned by a landlord, and the landlord's body. According to you these two things are identical: they are the same thing. A patch of earth on an landlord's estate is literally identical to a patch of skin on the landlord's body. There is no difference between them. This is what you seem to be claiming. Can you clarify whether this is what you actually believe?
Bryce S.
No they are not identical, and I never said that. I said the principle of property remains the same and consistent, as any principle should.
PJ
You said: "removing someone from his property by force is not different than removing someone's hand off of you that you don't want to be there." So, you were saying that there is no difference between a piece of land and a part of someone's body. Now you are contradicting yourself, yet again, by saying that they are not the same. As you said: "No they are not identical, and I never said that". So, is a piece of land the same thing as a part of someone's body, or not? Is removing someone from a piece of land the same thing as removing their hand from your body, or not? So far you have presented two completely contradictory arguments: On the one hand, you claim that there is no difference between forcefully evicting someone from a piece of land (that you claim to own), and removing someone's hand from your body. So you are quite clearly saying that there is no difference between your body and a piece of land. Yet on the other hand, you are now claiming that these two things are not the same. So you are clearly contradicting yourself.
Unfortunately, I suspect that you may not be capable of understanding that your expressed opinions are contradictory.
**comment edited for clarity.
Bryce S.
They are not the same thing obviously. But the principle of property is the same, which is what I was referring to when I said it's not different. And arm and land are two different things. But trespassing upon either without consent give the owner the ability to use force if necessary. Of course, most people would ask the person to leave, or to remove their hand, but the consent is still a legitimate moral requirement.
Philippe James
"They are not the same thing obviously." Ok, so you acknowledge that the land is not the same thing as your body. Yet you claim that you are morally entitled to claim the same rights over the land as you claim over your own body. Why?
Bryce S.
I do acknowledge that land is different than a body. The reason that you can use force to remove someone from land that you own, just as you can to remove someone from your body... Is because the land they own is the result of him or her trading his or her labor, or creating something with his or her labor. Self-ownership (exclusive control and preference over your body before anyone else) = owning your labor = being able to trade labor for say money = being able to trade money for land. Thus the property you own stems from self ownership. So if you say it's okay for someone to steal or use someone's property by force, you are saying it's okay to use force on somebody, because their property wouldn't have been attained without them trading themself (their time and labor). If you steal a persons property, they have lost a bit of themself, since they gave up their labor for that property, and it is now gone in value.
PJ
"the land they own is the result of him or her trading his or her labor, or creating something with his or her labor" Did they create the land?
Bryce S.
No, when you trade you don't need to create it. What I mean by trade is homesteading (which was common law outside the state). Homesteading says that you must create and maintain something for it to become property. So I can't go into a forest and claim it. I can go into a forest and cut down trees and build a house, a a fence, plant grass, etc etc and this is homesteading. You didn't create the land, you created the home.
Sorry I meant to say "what I mean by create* is homesteading"
PJ
what do you mean by 'homesteading'?
"I can't go into a forest and claim it. I can go into a forest and cut down trees and build a house, a a fence, plant grass, etc etc and this is homesteading."
Who makes these rules?
Bryce S.
I explained in the previous comment. Homesteading originated as common law outside of the state. If you manipulate land, say a part of a forest into a home, or land into a farm, you have created something in a form which wasn't previously there. In essence you have created value which wasn't previously there by manipulating land, and creating something from it, as well as tend it.
Nobody makes the rules. The rules were common law. There were no authorities that made the rules, it was agreed upon by communal or societal rule. If you come up with a story and write a book, you've created value using your ideas, and it is accepted as your book. The same applied to homesteading.
PJ
"which was common law outside the state" "The term "common law" originally derives from the 1150s and 1160s, when Henry II of England established the secular English tribunals. The "common law" was the law that emerged as "common" throughout the realm (as distinct from the various legal codes that preceded it, such as Mercian law, the Danelaw and the law of Wessex)[47] as the king's judges followed each other's decisions to create a unified common law throughout England. The doctrine of precedent developed during the 12th and 13th centuries,[48] as the collective judicial decisions that were based in tradition, custom and precedent.[49]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#History Common law is statist.
Bryce S.
Common law came about through customs, rather than legislation. For example, marriage by common law was determined by agreement of Union as well as public behavior. In common law, the law follows the societal or communal customs, rather than legislation which is a forced doctrine regardless of communal wishes or customs. The state was used, but not necessary as it was already customary.
Statute and Common law are very different. Common law deals more with disputes, where statutes are created by a parliament or government body.
[think he means to say 'customary' not 'common' here]
PJ
"If you manipulate land, say a part of a forest into a home, or land into a farm, you have created something in a form which wasn't previously there." What you're actually saying is that: 'if you perform a particular type of labour on a defined piece of land, which has not had that type of labour performed on it by another human being within a defined timeframe', this bestows upon you a moral right to exercise a particular form of authority over that piece of land, and by extension, over any other humans who might go on to that piece of land for whatever reason.
"Common law came about through customs, rather than legislation" Common law was a statist creation. Read some history. It might have reflected existing 'customs', but those 'customs' were statist and hierachical. It was the feudal period, for fuck's sake. The 'custom' at that time was that the lords and other wealthy people lived in the castles and big houses, and the workers did what they were told. This whole social structure was, of course, ultimately based on force.
Bryce S.
If you create value which wasn't there before by manipulating land, through homesteading you've obtained property. So yes, you can defend your property, and use force to remove someone from your property. It's no different than if you write a book or an essay, it is considered your work.
Local customary law that became common law is irrelevant to the feudalism present during that time. Feudalism isn't a custom. Private courts, or dispute resolution organizations agreed upon by both sprites involved, would settle these sorts of issues of property in an anarcho-capitalist model. (At least as one possibility)
Both parties involved*
PJ
"If you create value which wasn't there before by manipulating land, through homesteading you've obtained property" Ok, but you didn't create the land itself, so you can't claim ownership rights over it, according to you.
Bryce S.
Land already exists, but you can create something of value out of it. An artist doesn't create the paper or paint, they create a picture using it. Their artwork is their own, just as someone who builds a house or farm or what have you makes it their own.
PJ
The problem is that you have provided no logical reason to justify claiming the sort of absolute rights over land which you advocate. At best, your arguments can only serve to justify limited, contingent rights. Furthermore, you seem to believe that you are advocating individual rights and freedom. But you're actually advocating the exact opposite. The world you are advocating is one in which those who do not own land have absolutely no rights or freedom at all.
"Local customary law that became common law is irrelevant to the feudalism present during that time." That's ridiculous. Common law judges were appointed by and employed by the King, they came from the upper classes, and their judgements necessarily accepted and defended the existing hierarchical statist social structure and state law.
MJH
So the back and forth from before and during my involvement in this comment thread has continued unabated because +Philippe James is only responding to parts of the arguments the other commenters are making... Oh boy oh boy oh boy... If I put together some calculus expression to describe my arguments, then his responses, will it turn out that he is refuting my points or will it turn out that he is attacking only keywords and phrases? I wonder... I'm almost tempted to put the time and effort into bothering to do such a thing...
PJ
what main points did you want me to respond to. When someone throws a gish-gallop of nonsense at me I don't always reply to everything, understandably.
Bryce kept on repeating that if you create something it's 'yours'. And I pointed out that he didn't create the land so his argument doesn't work. To which he then responded that if you create something it's 'yours'. How often does this cycle have to go round before the ancap's brain actually starts to function?
let me summarise the ancap argument:
1) you can control your body, therefore you have the moral right to do what you want with your body and no one can tell you what to do with it.
• that is a complete non-sequitur (basic logical fallacy) so not a good start.
2) if you perform some labour on something you didn't create, it becomes something you did create.
• another complete non-sequitur.
3) therefore if you perform some labour on something it becomes equivalent to your body.
• two non-sequiturs here.
4) therefore if you perform some labour on a piece of land, you then have the same moral right of control over that land as you have over your body.
• another non-sequitur, based on the initial non-sequitur.
Quite an achievement. An argument which commits basic logical fallacies at every step, which fails completely as a logical argument in every way.
Well done, ancaps.
[note: (1) is a false claim made by ancaps - i.e. a lie - as ancaps actually believe that they are entitled to use force to control other people's bodies, due to their property claims over external things]
MJH
You're a very special snowflake, I'll give you that. You can go on the same mental shelf in my affections as Ryan Acumen and that guy with the Mario avatar who went on and on at me about the NAA/NAP needing to be ditched in favour of a positive obligation to materially help others.
That fact is what immediately makes socialists at once hilarious and terrifying to liberals; you'd ban or mandate literally everything and leave nothing to choice, and then have the temerity to claim you've improved everybody. Hardly anarchic. For why see 'YOU DIDN'T BUILD THAT' below*.
Are you a user on dA by any chance, and would you go by the username Valendale? Something in the hysterical, accusatory and anti-intellectual tone of your messages is uncannily familiar. He accused me of typed Gish gallops as well, which is an example of an accusative non sequitur because your accusation does not follow considering what a Gish gallop actually is.
I am type on your screen. You are type on my screen. We have all the time in the world to respond to each other's points. Therefore it is physically impossible for me to bombard you with a litany of tiny arguments you have no time to respond to. So grow up.
I'm sticking with my theory that you're a kid, possibly in a UK sixth-form college and with little experience of life outside the home. It would explain the very haphazard application of argumentation you've exhibited so far.
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NON-SEQUITURS
I will put an example non-sequitur here; "I feel cold so I'll take off my jacket." You just compared the basis of liberalism to the sentence in quotes just above. And you didn't bother to say why... which hurts, bucko.
You've basically declared that attempting to be rational is a non sequitur. Calling something a non-sequitur without pointing out how is a little silly since by your use of the term the morality of quotas which socialism is based on is equally impossible, as is all ethics and indeed rational philosophy, since engaging in epistemology, ethics and economics necessitate the use of rational thought to begin to make claims, first positive ones and then normative ones. This is because to make any normative statement you are at some point going to have to start on Terra Firma by talking about positive data.
Morality may in its first instance be a personal and subjective phenom inside the mind, but thereafter, when you engage in ethics, you are conducting the philosophy of morality, to arrive at a logically concsistent description of good versus bad moral conduct that actual laws can be based on.
The reason other people are giving up talking to you is not because you're the most brilliant debater to ever live - you wouldn't be wasting your time talking to tosspots like me if that were the case - but rather because you have some emotive bee in your bonnet and won't let it rest.
So human volition and free will, which exist as per available human experience, and the existence of our individual frames of reference, and the fact that each human is the sole comptroller at the helm of their body's interaction with the external world does not equal autonomy / self-control / responsibility / ownership over their actions?
If your answer is no you'd better give a whole lotta empirical evidence for why rational thought is useless, not to mention recant all the semi-rational thought that went into all your comments above.
"1) you can control your body, therefore you have the moral right to do what you want with your body and no one can tell you what to do with it."
Saying a positive thing and then a normative thing arising from the positive thing is not a non-sequitur. Since rights are entitlements from others they are simply other people acknowledging your own nature as a self-controlling being and not interfering in that self-control/responsibility/autonomy/ownership.
Remember that words like autonomy, responsibility and ownership often overlap in spoken language precisely because they're so intimately tied up in each other.
"2) if you perform some labour on something you didn't create, it becomes something you did create."
Deliberately misleading word-use to avoid the basic fact that the useful thing that results from the input of time and effort (labour / homesteading) is not the same as what was there before the effort was applied, making the criticism of homesteading here disingenuous or ill-informed.
"3) therefore if you perform some labour on something it becomes equivalent to your body."
Property in stuff can be surrendered through gift or trade, property in the self cannot. Thus there is no claim to equivalence, only that effort exacted upon unowned resources entitles a moral agent to claim those resources as theirs.
Since your precious AnCom communes are each going to privately own all the land within their boundaries and presume to tell people from other communes to stay away (the only alternative is one global free-for-all in property rights which would have to be globally policed, necessitating the continuation of the state) what's so bad about private property?
"4) therefore if you perform some labour on a piece of land, you then have the same moral right of control over that land as you have over your body. "
At least this sentence fairly represents what it's protesting. You have the right to self-determination, yes. Since the entire present-day production structure/division of labour is predicated on exchange in title to private property, and since that division of labour is the reason that goods and services offering us survival, security, comfort and leisure have only become more available with every passing decade from 1800 to now, I'm at a loss as to what the Hell you're even complaining about.
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RIGHTS
Rights is a synonym for entitlements and they come from all the other moral agents you interact with who do not impose on you. Your right to self ownership arises when others do not impede your de facto self-control. This stuff is pretty elementary but important. For all that you seem to have heard ancap talking points, you give the impression of someone who has no idea what self-ownership is actually supposed to mean, or how John Locke justified it in his two Treatises on Government.
Which is fine.
Until three years ago neither did I, and I'm 30 now. Economics and history are my foremost interests; been studying econ for 8 years, history for 16, but ethics only for 3. But don't be surprised that people like me find your comments to be messy and unedifying.
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MORAL AGENTS
Homo agens (us) is a species of moral agents. This is because humans can distinguish between morality and immorality; my 2-year-old nieces certainly can, anyway. Obviously they do not consistently act morally since they're so young, but each can identify when she has aggressed versus when she has not.
This ain't rocket science, bro. It's UK college level philosophy.
The distinction between morality and immorality is always that most simple and obvious tenet; don't attack others.
Since humans can identify morality we are moral agents and subject to moral judgement by each other for our conduct.
This is not the case for any other species because they cannot identify morality, meaning no other species is a moral agent.
You exercise ownership over your decisions because you are aware of the moral consequences of your actions, that is the capacity of your actions to respect (or not to respect) the autonomy of others.
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"YOU DIDN'T BUILD THAT"
You. Built. The. Farm.
Or whatever you did with/to the land. The fact that you are wilfully denying the blindingly obvious difference between unused natural resources and transformed resources in use by humans tells me you're completely uninterested in an honest discussion.
I mean, are you going to tell me now that the laptop I'm typing this comment on is nothing but unowned hydrocarbons, rare earths and a dash of aluminium? If you do you will effectively be declaring yourself a solipsist because you'll be denying the significance of all the human input that was mixed with those resources before they got to me in laptop form.
Not to mention I handed over £650 for it, roughly equivalent to 81.25 hours' work at the job I was working at the time. * Also, while we're on the subject of private property... see those hours I gave up for the computer made of scarce materials? That's my just claim to private property rights over this laptop.
Computers are of course means of production so presumably private ownership of them by individuals will be outlawed or at least the use of them as means of production by their private owners will be outlawed. Who will enforce that ban I wonder? You've been running your mouth about AnCaps don't get this and AnCap is an oxymoron that, why not riddle me an answer to the question above from your extensive experience of the real world and the scarcity, production structure, and division of labour that inform your everyday life today.
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A GOING OVER
You won't enjoy this. You could work for Putin, y'know. He loves people to rant away as you have done several times in this thread to scatter debate and confuse people. Well, it ain't working, chum. I see your methods and now I'm going to describe them in detail for everyone else to see
~~~
Mark - You own your body and you own the product of your labor because your body created it.~~~
Mark refers to chair, not wood. The aspect of philosophy which includes dealing with our conceptualisation of forms and things as separate from their basic material composition is called epistemology (theory of knowledge) and goes back at least to Plato's cave, presumably earlier.
The wood/chair distinction was actually one of the first examples used in philosophy class back in college. Chair is a form imposed by the human mind, but also, in a practical sense, is made by application of time and effort.
~~~
Mark - All of us understand that we did not create wood. But we also understand that the wood has no claims of ownership in this hypothetical universe. So basically on a "first come, first serve" basis, resources can be acquired through labor.~~~
Trees are not moral agents. Humans are. As per the rights/entitlements explanation above it is necessary for subsequently arriving humans to respect the peaceful property claims of the person or people who got there first since those first people put the work in, and the later arrivals didn't.
~~~
Matt - "you didn't make yourself either, but you are your own inescapable boss"~~~
Philippe - So what if I am? This has nothing to do with chairs, which if you hadn't noticed are things which exist outside of me. Besides, you're not really your own 'inescapable boss'. Try controlling your bodily functions, or reprogramming your genes, or your brain, or deciding when your body stops working and you die.
Matt states the obvious about free-will over voluntary nervous system and so external actions affecting external world. Philippe dodges by talking about chairs + snide remarks, thus . Philippe tries to deny Matt's obvious statement using other functions, thus strawman. Philippe also confirms Matt's "inescapable" point by saying "Try controlling... when your body stops working and you die."
~~~
Matt - "the liberal position"~~~
Philippe - You're not a liberal, not even a 'classical liberal'. Stop pretending.
"The limit of each moral agent's freedom shall be respect for the equal freedom of others."
Liberalism in a sentence.
The non-agression principle/axiom is simply that sentiment taken to its logical conclusion, that ALL action by one moral agent that impedes other moral agents' autonomy without their consent is wrong. In other words consent is the yardstick of anlib/ancap ethics, the difference between...
Euthanasia & murder
Intimacy & molestation
Lovemaking & rape
Sparring & assault
Care & kidnapping
Sharing & theft
Trade & fraud
Riddle me the illiberalism here, Clean One...
~~~
Matt - "The logic ... is far from nonsensical in this regard."
PJ - You haven't made any sort of logical argument. All you've said is "I control my body [but you don't really] ... therefore I own this chair [total non sequitur]"~~~
Well now I have, and it's just above. If I make, buy or receive in gift a chair I own it and you don't. This is not hard to understand which means you've been disingenuous this whole time.
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PEACE
This was a very long comment, and you can accuse me of a gish gallop if you wish. However, in te same breath you might as well accuse me of being a meringue for all the authority such a claim can enjoy in a typed medium.
If this comment seems unfair in its length then be methodical - copy-paste it into a notepad and break it down slowly into its logical components, then when you respond attack the components with some thought for what meanings I am actually conveying rather than the mental aerobics above.
Saying things like "if you perform some labour on something you didn't create, it becomes something you did..." is disingenuous and unfair. I know exactly what you're thinking after reading that.
But Matt said, "Humans didn't create the universe, therefore no human may claim any property right over anything that would deny another human its use..."
Yes I did, because your statements to Mark Sebring and the others were to the effect that;
• Humans don't create original natural resources
• Therefore can't use homesteading through mixing labour to justify advent of property rights in stuff
Eg1;
"You're saying that by performing an action on an object that is not the product of your labour, you thereby turn the object into a product of your labour.
In other words, you're saying that by performing an action on something you didn't create, you thereby turn the thing you didn't create into something you did create. This is a non sequitur, a basic logical fallacy.
If you take an object which is not the product of your labour, and do something to it, that does not make the object the product of your labour.
You have not produced the object, you have acted upon it.
If I find a rock (which is not the product of my labour), and hit it with a pickaxe, that does not turn the rock into the product of my labour. My effort may have affected the rock in some way, but that does not mean that the rock itself is the product of my labour."
All this was actually pretty passable, but you ruined it when you said;
"the problem with your argument is that the table and chairs are still composed of things that you didn't create. "
This meant you were actually declaring the chair to be nothing more than wood. That right there was a non sequitur because the second position does not logically follow from the first. Also, in economics the term production refers to transformation through mixing of labour (and usually capital) with a substance or an object to create something with a use different from its previous one. You are not really going to argue that a tree and a chair are the same, non?
We do create things for which we have uses through mixing our labour with natural resources, where the resources themselves could not have been thusly used, and you denied this very simple point, presumably either because you have a very blinkered opinion of private property or because you're young and still figuring out how to think and debate.
PJ
"This is in reference to the idea that one person could theoretically take ownership of all of the world".
No, it's not about that.
"if you went for the coercive option first, well, where would you take over, and how would you pay for it, considering nobody would do business with you."
That is an amazingly dumb thing to say. Your argument is that taking over and controlling things by force is economically unsustainable.
See: the entirety of human history to understand why you are wrong.
"This is just a statement to the effect you can violently defend your property."
What I meant by my note was that ancaps believe they are entitled to use force against other people's bodies in order to enforce their property claims and rules. This flatly contradicts the false claim often repeated by ancaps, i.e. that they believe it is wrong for people to use force against others, or that people are entitled to do what they want with their bodies without interference from others.
No ancap actually believes this, so it is strange that they feel the need to keep repeating this lie. "fair use rights which can easily be agreed when property titles are exchanged" In order to have an exchange of property titles, the property title must have originated from somewhere. Ancap arguments regarding the origins of and justifications for existing property titles are both historically false and illogical.
MJH
"That is an amazingly dumb thing to say."
In 2015 try to start your own world-domineering fief and turn humanity into your serfs. Go on. The fact that my statement was about any potential attempt to work from the resources available to any given individual or group now was vital to understanding the argument.
Maybe I should be sorry I didn't specifically say that. Yet again you skirted the entire point because you have no argument. Give up.
"wrong for people to use force against others"
INITIATE force against others. Your inability to identify cause and effect is your cross to bear, not mine.
I'm not bothering to respond to anything else you've said because, as always, you're ignoring what I'm saying to score points, rather than actually engaging with the ideas.
Now I actually miss FinnishAnarchist - at least (s)he cared what her/his opponents were trying to say. You're either a solipsist or a sophist or both, and nobody is impressed by you, including the other AnComs here, which is why they're not backing you up.
PJ
"INITIATE force against others. Your inability to identify cause and effect is your cross to bear"
Typical deceitful ancap garbage. What you actually believe is that you are entitled to initiate force against the bodies of others - against peaceful people who have not previously used force against you - in order to enforce your property claims over external objects.
[defense of property is justified on consequential grounds cos I need it to live at anything above a bare subsistence level.]
Bryce S.
You do not initiate force to enforce property claims. Using force to claim property is not viewed as the legitimate obtaining of ownership. Homesteading and trade, in contrast are and have been in history viewed as legitimate property ownership between ordinary people, such as farmers. And neither homesteading nor trading involve initiating force. REACTION to force is different. Self-defense and defense of one's own property (which are really two sides of the same coin) are not the INITIATION of force.
MJH
"in order to enforce your property claims over external objects."
If I enter your house and sit down and watch your TV and eat your food and you tell me to get out I'll remind you that you said that.
Maybe at this point it will occur to you how Orwellian your endless dissembling in this discussion has been. Until such a time, it's been nice but you really have nothing to say.
"You can't pay a 'defence agency' to protect your property unless you already have property."
Do you mean defence as in a security company, not an arbitration agency?
If so, then you're almost certainly correct. They very likely would mainly hire out their services to neighbourhood/road/park/farm owners, arbitration agencies and each other as these would be more dependable long-term customer bases. Roads don't disappear very quickly.
If you did mean arbiters, however;
Dude, just subscribe like Netflix or Apple Music. Private arbitration agencies will all basically be insurance companies anyway, charging a monthly or quarterly premium based on their assessment of the risk you pose.
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